Florida teens who recorded drowning man will not be charged in his death

A group of Florida teens who taunted a drowning man while filming his death from afar will not be criminally charged, according to police.

In the more than two-minute long video, the five teen boys -- who are between the ages of 14 and 16 -- can be heard laughing as the man struggles to stay afloat, police say, in a pond near his family's Cocoa, Florida, home.

I can understand they can't be criminally charged, that there's no statute that would have required them to attempt a rescue or even notify authorities -- and I'm not sure how you'd word a law like that, though I'm sure there will be an attempt to do so now. I wonder if a civil suit might be possible, but I'm not sure of the grounds there, either.

All I know is if I'd been the cop interviewing the one teenager who apparently just smirked, I might have found myself up on assault charges afterwards -- and considered it well worth it.

Well, at least these kids are letting everyone feel better about themselves, in their indignation. They should have called for help, sure, assuming the recording they made was on a cell phone they clearly had the means to do so. But that's about all they could have done and I doubt it would have arrived in time. This man killed himself.

Well, at least these kids are letting everyone feel better about themselves, in their indignation. They should have called for help, sure, assuming the recording they made was on a cell phone they clearly had the means to do so. But that's about all they could have done and I doubt it would have arrived in time. This man killed himself.

One could, in some circumstances, understand the lack of action. I would certainly not try to argue that juveniles, in particular, have a legal obligation to have attempted a rescue, particularly if it involved putting themselves at risk (we don't know if any of them could even swim). Not attempting to call for help (even if it was unlikely to arrive in time), or even to report it to anyone afterwards, I find less defensible, but again, possibly understandable in some circumstances.

But it's the callous remarks and lack of any shock or remorse that are causing the outrage. (“Ain’t nobody going to help you, you dumb bitch. You shouldn’t have got in there.") I don't see how anyone with any trace of humanity can fail to be appalled.

But it's the callous remarks and lack of any shock or remorse that are causing the outrage. (“Ain’t nobody going to help you, you dumb bitch. You shouldn’t have got in there.") I don't see how anyone with any trace of humanity can fail to be appalled.

You're not familiar with the Darwin Awards, are you?

If being appalled is an emotional reaction... I'm not. I know they were morally wrong not to call for emergency services, but I'd be lying if I said I felt anything over it. I learned nothing new about humanity or myself in watching the video or reading the article. All quiet on the western front.

You felt nothing over it, but felt the need to criticize others who do?

Would you also feel the same way about someone videotaping (and laughing at) animal abuse from afar? Or any other situation where the bystander isn't actively harming someone, and couldn't do anything to help the situation, but is clearly getting their kicks off of a being's suffering? Because I think a visceral reaction of disgust is pretty normal when presented with this kind of story.

You felt nothing over it, but felt the need to criticize others who do?

Yes. Actually, I'll admit to feeling a slight twinge at seeing these teenagers described as vermin. Vermin is something that, if you were to come upon it in a burlap sack sitting on the edge of a bridge, you would tighten the draw-string on and push off into the water.

I think getting kicks out of human suffering is a pretty human reaction. Or at least there's a strong current of it running through many cultures, almost forming a sub-culture of it's own. There are actually people out there who, straight-faced, believe that people who die due to "stupidity" deserve to die and it's for the good of the gene pool. Some of them even find it funny, whether it's a UL or an actual death.

I learned nothing new about humanity in this thread, nothing I haven't already been exposed to to the point of being numb to it, though I did learn something new about a poster or two on this forum. So that's the feeling, the only feeling, I went off of.

And, as I have said in other posts, I tend to tailor my commentary to who will read it (i.e. members of this forum). Consider the audience. There is nothing I can say to those kids through this forum. There is, however, something I can say to you and everyone else who reads this thread. So that's who I'm going to talk to: you, not them.

Do any of us learn something new when we look at photos of holocaust victims? We've all seen it, studied it, watched movies about it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't still be appalled.

I honestly don't understand why it bothers you that someone called these kids vermin, but it doesn't bother you that these kids called a drowning man a "dumb b****." Why do you assign moral significance to one and not the other?

I don't think he twisted it. It's that the "vermin" remark was made in this very thread, and (before ASL stepped in) seemed somewhat representative of the way it was going. The teenagers in question aren't here.

The way he snipped my quote makes it look like I was saying I didn't know why the vermin comment bothered him. Full stop. But that wasn't what I asked at all. I asked why one situation bothered him and not the other.

Police in Florida are pursuing misdemeanor charges against five teenagers for failure to report a death after authorities say they recorded video of a man’s drowning and didn't intervene....“When we initially reviewed this case it was determined there were no laws broken as the teens were not directly involved with the death,” Cantaloupe said in a statement today. "Further research of the statutes and consultation with the State Attorney’s Office yielded the decision to move forward with charges under this statute. It’s our belief that this law has never been enforced in a scenario like this, but we feel it could be applicable.”

In France, that would be a clear case of "Non-assistance à personne en danger" (failing to assist an endangered person). The law is clear : if, witnessing a situation where, without putting yourself at risk, you failed to help a person in clear danger, you can be brought to trial on a misdemeanour charge, and be sent to prison for a maximum of five yars, and have to pay a fine up to 75 000 € . Nobody asks you to be a hero, but throwing a line to a drowning person would be the least that is expected of you, if you have a line to throw nearby. Here's the french Wikipedia article about that :